


Sweet Sleep

by corvids_5



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: After The Games, Descriptions of PTSD, F/M, Mentions of Violence, Nightmares, Peeta's POV, mentions of physical abuse, potentially more to come, sweet syrup, trying to fill in the blanks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:26:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23992987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corvids_5/pseuds/corvids_5
Summary: Following the days that follow his return to 12 and his new life.
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen & Peeta Mellark
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Sweet Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is my introduction to this fandom. This fandom and pairing are ones that I always come back to when my life turns dark. I find comfort in the the characters that Suzanne Collins has crafted. Katniss continues to teach me that it is okay to be weak when everyone wants you to be strong and Peeta gives me the strength to forgive.
> 
> This story takes place in the few days that follow Katniss and Peeta's return to 12. It follows Peeta, his nightmares and memories that where never given to us. These memories are my head-canons and to the best of my memory, they are not part of the actual store that Collins gave us. The name for Peeta's brother was taken from fanon.
> 
> I do not own these characters, I do not own this world. I do not claim to, nor would I do it justice.
> 
> I leave this for you, on the eve of the release of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

I reach my hand for hers and though I tell her this gesture is only one more time for the audience, as the words leave me I wish them to be a lie. The events of the Games tumbling around my already fragile mind and the pain radiating around my left thigh makes me grind my teeth as my chin quivers. This mechanical leg is weak, the doctors say that in time it will be like I never lost my real one, that one day it will be strong again. All I can really think of when I look in the mirror is how they have outwardly changed me, how their Games have taken not only a part of my body but also parts of my mind. 

I feel her hand in mine, it breaks me from my thoughts as it squeezes in preparation for the onslaught of cameras. Those blinding flashes of light that leave flares and specks of white across my vision were easy to smile for before everything that has transpired, because before I didn't know that everything to come after would be a lie. 

The small station is bleak and grey as I watch it roll into view, magnifying as the Capitol train charges forward and ushers me to my doom. There is a layer of sweat that divides her heated flesh from mine and I am thankful for it. I remember the Games and her hand in mine as we burned in that chariot, I recall her hands on my fevered face and how they gripped my chest in slumber, how they wrung infection from my body.

The train rolls to a stop and I stumble over my foreign leg, her hand grips mine tighter and steadies me. I can't help but look at her from the corner of my eye, her hair is in one braid and her clothes are plain, muted in color. I watch her swallow as she breathes in a shaky breath, the doors slide open before us and as our feet step out onto the station, the light is blinding.

~*~

I have only ever seen Victors Village from afar, twelve extravagant homes all lined up, immaculate, manicured so neatly for the cameras. This is the place Victors goes when they have survived but, as I walk between the stone pillars and into the valley of houses, it feels as if I have entered my coffin. This tiny patch of grotesquely large homes full of finery that could never be found in the Seam or Merchant Row, held no victors. I am no longer a boy but half a man, Haymitch is too drunk and broken, battling nightmares that are decades old and Katniss is now a beacon of hope whose internal flame is smoldering. 

This is how the Capital has changed us. 

When Effie points me in the direction of the home that the Capital has now chosen for me to live the rest of my days in, my insides coil on themselves. There is a beautifully placed garden that borders the front and sides of the home. It holds an assortment of berries and greenery that are barely blooming. The door is no less than eight feet tall, it is too big, it towers over the face of the building, it is a door that will bar me inside. Effie leaves me to my devices with a quick hug and kiss on the cheek, she is probably in a hurry to get to Katniss and her family. She is three houses down from me and my heart quickens at the thought.

With Effie gone I am left to finally take in the enormity of it all. Standing in the middle of a house that is too big, too full of things that have no trace of who I am. I am left to finally realize whether or not I actually came back or if I am still in that arena trying to figure out how I am to survive. I come to a decision, while I am taking in the mahogany furniture, the cherry wood flooring, the lavishly painted walls. The flower arrangements that are scattered throughout the living and dining room blind me, with their bright colors and sweet smell. The furniture that is not wooden is accented in muted colors that represent District 12, to show that even though I am a Victor, there is no escaping where I come from. 

I come to the decision, still standing in the entryway, that this is an entirely new arena.

The entryway begins to suffocate me and my desperation to leave has pulled my body in the direction of the kitchen. 

There is nothing nice to say about it. 

I spend hours wandering the halls, counting the five bedrooms over and over, I finally settle on a bedroom that I claim will be mine. It is located towards the front of the house, it faces the street and it is the smallest of the five. 

When night falls, I feel overwhelming relief and unbearable loneliness now that space resides between her and I. The distance cushions the air around me and saves my ears from her fitful screaming. It doesn't take me long to realize that I have traded her nightmares for Haymitch’s.

~*~

Mrs. Everdeen and Prim bring light. 

It is a different kind of light, it is fragile, just barely enough to permeate the darkness, I realize it one day as I am walking from the garden along the side of my shiny new home to my front door.  
  
The sound carries on the air, it is breathy, light and hauntingly exquisite as it slices through silence and worms its way into my ears. They perk at the notes and the hairs at the base of my neck stand tall as realization courses through me. I know this song. It was sung to me as a child, in a baritone voice and it reminds me of a happier time, one that is now too far out of reach. The door to my home swings open as I struggle to pull away from the noise, my hands fumbling with the strawberries I have gathered. The handful of berries fall to the floor in soft thuds when a voice from behind my luxuriously painted walls calls my name.

"Peeta?"

He is here.

I round the corner that leads to my kitchen, not bothering to close my door. The strawberries forgotten as I kick one in my haste and it riots down the path in front of me, smashing into a thick mahogany table leg. My father is standing in front of my oversized sink, gazing out the open window, there is no doubt that his ears are being accosted by that sweet sound. 

He pulls himself from the music just long enough to look at his surroundings to smile as he turns to face me. "This is a fine kitchen-" my father nods in the direction of my stove and all its occompaning grandeur, "-beautiful oven." His voice carries over the blood rushing through my ears. "Have you used it?" His question feels accusatory, like he is admonishing me for having not properly seasoned it. 

My mother would have beat me by now. 

I swallow. I have called these walls my home for just two days and the immaculate decadence of it all has frightened me, reminded me too much of the Capital. Within these walls I do not reside within 12, I am still in my Capital suite, still waiting to enter the arena. 

"Haven't been hungry enough to try." It is a lie, there will always be hunger but lying comes easy now. I have become good at it, so good that I fear one day I will not be able to tell what is real and what is not real. 

My father smiles.

"For you." He turns and gestures towards the table. There sits a paper bag tucked in on itself, the contents must be small to warrant so many folds. "Lily said it will help," my father reaches for his collar and pulls, like it is synching around his neck and choking him and my eyes narrow at the action. 

Lily, Mrs. Everdeen, I break myself from my thoughts as I let my mind settle on the dust of his words. 

My eyes fall to the paper bag again as he continues to explain the reason for his intrusion. "I'm not sure if you… I mean, I don't know if you have the same nightmares…"

His voice teeters off as if he isn't sure he is allowed to talk about this, allowed to ask if his son wakes in the middle of the night screaming. I want to tell him that I do not. That mine will never compare to her’s. She held a dying girl in her arms and mourned as her flesh grew cold. She shot a boy through his chest with an arrow and dropped a nest of tracker jackers on the Career pack….and me. 

When I close my eyes it feels as if the venom is still inside me, still curling around in my veins, poisoning my blood and my mind. I want to tell him that in a sick and twisted way mine might be worse because I have already lost her. But most of all, I want to be furious with the man in front of me and I can't, because I can picture Prim's rounded face. How she smiled up at Katniss in adoration when we stepped off the train and all I could think of was my father and his promise.

~*~

_“She is a survivor that one.” My mother says with a smile on her lips. “Maybe District 12 finally has a winner.”_

__

__

_I can feel the tears pull at my eyes as my eyelids struggle to hold back the flood that will surely overflow. I nod my head at her as she turns her back to me and leaves. I’m left standing in the stuffy Justice building with my father, my brothers too cowardly to come and say goodbye, too see me off to my death and I have just watched my mother abandon me._

_My father is standing a few feet from me, I can barely look at him. I imagine his face is sheet white, that a layer of sweat has coated his forehead and upper lip, I imagine that he struggles internally at the thought of his son dying. I know this is not the case, there is silent relief that there will be one less mouth to feed, there will be an extra serving of week old bread and squirrel stew. It is a common misconception between Seam children and those that dwell on Merchant Row, because there is hunger behind the walls of my home, in the pit of my belly, my eyes, hunger of the body and the soul, hunger for food and for love._

_“Listen to me son,” I feel him place his hand on my shoulder and squeeze as I am still staring at the door, still mentally chasing my mother’s footsteps and willing her to come back to me, to tell me that she loves me, that I am strong, that she wants me to come home, that she has not condemned me to dying. It is too much to hope for, here in 12 hope dies before it can ever be born. It died for me the second I drew breath..._

_“Remember who you are...”_

_His words feel like ice water down my back and they sound so far away, like I am already on the Capital train and his shouts are becoming distant as I am whisked away from 12._

_“Promise me,” I breathe and the stuffy room of the Justice building feels as if it is about to burst, unable to accommodate the air that has escaped me. I turn from the door and stare into my father’s blue eyes, he is not sheet white, his upper lip is not sweaty but his blue eyes are still, like a lonely lake that is beckoning someone to return to it._

_He looks as if he doesn't know what I am talking about but soon realization dawns on him. He has seen the sketches that I keep hidden under the floorboard of my bed, the beating and the bread and he nods at me with understanding. I want to tell him that it is his fault, that if he never showed me, if he never told me to stop and listen this would not have happened but I can’t._

_The look in his eyes shifts, it is no longer a lonely lake, it is barren, dried up and forgotten. ___

____

____

_He pats my cheek, like he did the day that he told me the story of her mother, his lips in a grim line as he steps back to look at me. He is soaking me in one last time, commiting me to his memory, before he turns and leaves._

_In minutes the Peacekeepers come and take me._

~*~

  
“Thank you,” I say. 

I make my way towards the paper bag and press it between my fingers, blindly feeling the contents within. It is hard and rounded, a glass jar of some kind and I have a sinking feeling of what is inside of it. 

“Your mother sends you her best,” he grins at me.

Yes, I think, as I place the paper bag back on the table and walk around it towards the sink and window, until I am standing almost shoulder width with my father. I do not know how to broach the subject of my mother, of Katniss and the reality that my love for her may have been the catalyst for my years of abuse. So I confess one of my greatest fears, with the memory of Reaping day still present in my mind. 

“I will never be the same again…” it is a disgusting mangled ripple that feels torn from my throat as I let the words seep into the reality around me. 

“I know.” 

It is all he says.

~*~

I’m staring inside the paper bag and the sweet syrup smiles up at me. My teeth bite the inward curling of my lips and I feel the ghost of a hand pressing down against my mouth. I can almost feel the cut, the swelling and the pain, like a phantom’s kiss. 

When I close my eyes I see them. 

~*~

_Cato. Clove. Glimmer. Marvel._

__

__

_They have me surrounded. They are sneering, cackling at me with their hackles raised and haunches poised, ready to propel themselves through the air and towards my throat. I hear Haymitch in my mind, he is telling me to run, to find water and survive. Survive, it is the best advice he can give me. I am not a fighter, the rare moment on the train after the Reaping is a fleeting memory. I do not have the fortitude to maim, to kill… the desperation is not near… yet._

_Cato jeers and calls me "lover boy" and a different beast rears inside my head, it is screaming at me to protect. I remember my interview, my conversations with Haymitch and my promise to myself that she is to be victorious. I am reassured by the thought that Katniss knows the woods better than anyone, better than the Careers circling me, better than the rest of the tributes scattered throughout the arena and most definitely better than me. So I do the unthinkable._

_"Let me help you find her."_

_I can almost hear the Capitol audience gasp._

_**...she came here with me...** _ ********

********

********

_There is no preparation for my next shocking blow._

"I _**can**_ _find her." I correct myself, the assurance in my voice palpable. I feel strong in the shadow of my words because the closer I keep the Careers, the closer I am to finding her..._

_Cato looks at me as if this was his plan all along and suddenly I feel as if I have been caught, like a rabbit in a snare. He nods and hands me a spear, arming me so that I can help hunt down the girl that I have proclaimed to love. There is a part of me that believes he does this for another reason, that when he decides to kill me, he hopes that I will put on a show. I remember his nod towards me in the training facility, the subtle show of acknowledgement that I am physically strong. If he is hoping for a majestic battle, he is sorely mistaken._

_I will surely break like a dandelion in the wind..._

* * *

**  
_“Are you mad?” I prod her with the shaft of the spear that Cato had given me. “Get up! Get up!” I scream as I push her from her spot, “Run! Run!”  
_  
**

**_I hear Cato cutting through brush behind me as I watch her turn and run, leaving me to face down the beast._ **

**_I’m disoriented, my chest is throbbing from bruises and a thick burn from a few days ago, when the forest was set ablaze. I have been stung several times, my mind shifting between hallucination and reality. Cato swings at me and I lift my spear to block, the shaft shattering into splinters as his strike slashes downward and I scream in pain, this is it, the breaking..._**

**_Instinct takes over and I remember a different time, it is the tracker jacker venom pulling memories from a long lost cache._ **

**_The makeshift gym is crowded and I am staring down my brother, he is bigger and stronger, much like Cato. Rye smirks and shifts right, my body moves on it’s own, I mirror the memory of my brother._ **

**_I shift towards my right and I begin to circle, my arms are raised slightly and Cato cocks his head towards his left, his eye swelling as the tracker jacker sting blossoms on his face. I use his temporary blindness to lunge and I tackle him. My left leg is screaming at my exertion and pain specks my eyes, it appears as white hot lights that almost blind me._ **

**_The venom in my veins pulls me back to years ago._**

_**Rye has me pinned and he squeezes my neck between his forearm and bicep, I can’t breathe, it feels as if I am going to pass out.** _

**_Cato’s neck feels like stone between my dwindling muscles but, I squeeze and writhe against the dirt and I wait until the body that I am choking the life from stops moving. I wait for the canon to boom but it never comes. I feel for a pulse point and find one. I should kill him, it would be easy, too easy and it doesn’t feel right to me._ **

**_I stand, my right leg carrying what little weight I still have and I limp my way back towards the water just behind the brush, the animal in me seeking a place to hide._ **

**_“Take this beating as a lesson,” I hear my brother tell me. “There are worse things than mother’s fists.” Rye presses against my bruised neck._ **

****_“There are the Hunger Games.”_****

* * *

~*~

  
I'm frozen. My face is damp as beads of sweat congeal in the crevices of my nose, the corners of my eyes and mouth. A sticky ring has formed around my neck as my shirt melts into my bed, into my skin. The muscles in my thighs strain to move and the newly knitted flesh above where my knee would still be quivers. I grimace as my hand shoots downwards to pat down the snarl of pain that has thawed my bones. 

When I finally have the strength to throw my leg over the side of my bed I am left to let my eyes wander over the mechanical appendage on my bedroom floor. It stares back at me with Cato's eyes, the ones with malice and the ones with fear.

The sun finally weaves its life through my shutters, the mechanical appendage is still staring up at me. I don't know how much time has passed from my nightmare to daybreak but, I do know I have to keep moving. I reach down and grab my new leg and strap it to my tender flesh, there will come a time in which it will become an extension of me, but this is not that time. It is stiff and painful, it digs into my skin and the cut muscle beneath it groans in protest. 

When I finally make it down my stairs and into my kitchen I decide that I will bake. The pantry is filled to the brim with grains and flours that I have never seen, they appear to be from each district, the most valuable from the Capital.

  
I take my time pondering my decision of what it is that I will make first. I settle on making the tangy bread that my father made and his father before him and so on, down the line, predating the war. When I am finished I stare at the jar that will feed generations and I feel the oven glowering at me from behind the jar. Another time I tell myself, it isn’t ready yet. 

I am not ready yet.

~*~

I make my way to Haymitch’s house and catch a glimpse of her, it is fleeting and then gone. 

~*~

The screen clicks off and I ask questions. 

What happens now, what is next, tell me the next three moves, prepare me. 

It is all too much to ask but, I do anyway. I am still planning, still plotting because the whisper’s of a Victory Tour have been confirmed. Haymitch drinks and kicks me out.

~*~

My house is cool when I finally come home, thrown out like a dog after too many questions. 

Rye is standing in my hallway, his face is ashen. 

_“I should have… I should have… I should have…”_ His face is contorted in pain. He falls in my hallway and his nails dig into the cherry wood as his tears slam against the floor like hail. I go to him and we talk. He laughs and I force smiles across my lips. He tells me that I finally got the girl and I nod, he doesn’t know that I lost her.

Hours later we say goodbyes.

I don’t tell him. 

Maybe one day I will. 

One day I will tell him that it was his lesson that saved me...

~*~  


It is fresh, the appearance of Rye and my nightmare from the day before. So fresh that I can smell and taste it in the back of my throat. I grab the paper bag from my nightstand as I sit on the cherry wood floors and unlatch my mechanical prosthetic. I reach for my home-made paints and designer brushes from the Capital that I have hidden beneath the mahogany nightstand. I crawl to the center of the floor of my bedroom and I set to work.

My fingers are tired and yet they move as my eyes strain in the absence of light. When I am finished I take a shallow sip from the pot of sleep syrup and brush my stained fingers through my sweaty hair. I paint her how I remember her, before she was filled with fear and terror. 

"Stay with me," I whisper into the floor, my forehead pressing into the wooden slates. My fingers have worked diligently all night, pressing paint into the lavish cherry wood. My arms stretch over the flat surface as I stare into the face I have painted, the contours of her cheek bones are hollow and her hair is braided over her shoulder as she lays, stained, into the floor before me. My hand strokes across her cheek and a smear of red blemishes her perfect skin. 

"Stay with me…" I'm sobbing now, tears leaving my eyes in thick hot droplets as they hit the smattering of paint that makes up the rest of her body and it bleeds around the wetness. She is disappearing before my eyes and I try desperately, my fingers moving faster now, to put all of her pieces back into the right places.

Maybe hours have passed, I do not know. All I know is I wait desperately for a voice to whisper back at me.

I feel my eyes grow heavy. The pot of sweet syrup sits empty as I roll to the side of my painted replica. I curl into the colors and with my bed forgotten, sleep finally takes me. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hello on my tumblr: [forbiddencorvidae](https://forbiddencorvidae.tumblr.com/)


End file.
